PART 2: Young chefs today

In the second part of our series we talk to two young women who both have extensive experience in the competitive arena - Amber Heaton from the Star Gold Coast, who won Proud to Be a Chef last year and was Queensland Metro Silver Medal winner in this year’s Nestlé Golden Chef’s Hat Awards; and Sarah Jones from the National Wine Centre, Adelaide who is herself a four-time Nestlé Golden Chef’s Hat SA national finalist. Amber and Sarah share their take on the value of competitions as well as their thoughts about the challenges faced by young chefs today.

Amber: Proud to be part of a passionate workplace

Both Amber and Sarah are 21. Amber has been in the industry for almost three years, having begun her apprenticeship in September 2018 at a small restaurant in Broadbeach on the Gold Coast. “My mum’s side of the family is Italian, and both mum and nonna are very good cooks, plus I have extended family who are involved in restaurants,” Amber says. “I wanted to get into fine dining, so I did work experience in year 10 then got my first job, which I loved.”

After three years she decided to apply for The Star Gold Coast and now works in its Vivo restaurant which she describes as “a very passionate workplace – I’ve only been here two weeks so it’s still pretty new to me, but the team is so much fun, it’s really like a family. We all go on break together, we all sit together and talk, have dinner together – it’s a great environment. The head chef is so talented, the way he executes the meals is amazing. The food is inspired by the cuisine of the Amalfi coast of Italy, so we have lots of seafood, good quality meats, a couple of pastas, pizzas and now new small plates. We’ve got some really nice prosciutto and brizzola, highlighting the quality of our produce.”

Sarah: On working as an all-rounder

Sarah began her apprenticeship in May 2016 while still at school. “I was in year 11 and doing a certificate 2 in kitchen operations, and one day we had an excursion to the National Wine Centre. The executive chef at the time told my teacher they were looking for an apprentice and asked if she could put anyone forward – she pointed at me and said ‘that one!’ So I pretty much dropped school and started cooking. I started off as a casual kitchenhand because I was so young and hadn’t had any experience – and I was so grateful because I got to know how the kitchen worked, and now I have a lot of respect for the kitchenhands who put in all that work behind the scenes.”

Having completed her apprenticeship in February, Sarah is currently working at the National Wine Centre on a casual basis as an all-rounder. “It’s an award-winning function and wedding venue, and of course we’ve had been affected by Covid, with lots of functions postponed rather than cancelled. When it first hit we all agreed we wanted to continue working even though the centre was closed, so we spent time doing massive deep-cleans – we took the kitchen apart from the ground up and put it back together again!

“We also made up food packs for the staff who weren’t qualified for Jobkeeper from our leftover food, and started bringing in revenue by making dine-in delivery packs for families. That was wonderful because it kept us working and cooking. Our sommelier chose wines to match the food and conducted wine and food tastings with customers via Zoom, and we ended up winning an innovation award for that.”

Dedication and hard work pays off for Amber

Amber adds: “I’ve honestly been very lucky, because I still live at home and that’s really helped a lot, but I think seeing people struggle in our industry has been very tough. Not that we’ve had many lockdowns, but the last two we had really hit hard – all the food that’s wasted, and all the casuals who rely on these jobs for their income having to struggle. Having said that, Star really support us – in the last lockdown they still paid our wages for that week, and after lockdown we were fully booked because everyone wants to get out and enjoy food again!”

Amber’s first competition experience was through work – she came second in Star’s internal Apprentice of the Year competition. “After that I went to Sydney and competed, and over the last couple of years I’ve done more and more competitions. I won the Les Toques Blanches competition in 2019, La Chain des Rotisseurs in 2020 and also that year I was the International Culinary Scholarship winner of Proud to Be a Chef, which is a mentoring program as opposed to a cooking comp. Then this year I was Queensland Metro winner for Nestlé Golden Chefs.”

These achievements are the result of a lot of dedication and hard work, as Amber makes clear: “People say, ‘oh, you’ve won another one!’ but they don’t see how many times I’ve competed. I applied for Golden Chefs four years in a row and I only placed this year. I find competing a great way to give yourself a push – once you’ve entered, you’ve got to do it, and it allows you to focus and concentrate on your skills. The connections you make with people are incredible too. But you have to take the knocks as well: I say to our first-years at work, you can’t let just one competition outcome upset you; if you don’t believe in yourself, that sets you back.”

Sarah steps up to compete

Sarah’s initial foray into the competitive world came just after starting her apprenticeship: “My head chef Steven Clark was the main reason I got into them – he told the story of how he competed when younger and how that built him into the chef he is today. I did Nestlé Golden Chefs in June 2017 and along with my workmates got a silver medal on my first time out so I was pretty happy! A few days later I was prepping for the Australian Culinary Federation’s National Apprentice Competition, and I got a gold medal and made it through to the national finals, so that was pretty cool!”

More successful wins followed, then came the opportunity to compete internationally in 2019. “Myself and my teammate Ben Rogers got to travel to France to compete for the Trophee Mille, which was the first time Australia had been represented. I’d never been overseas in my life so I went full steam ahead and it was amazing! We were there for a month in total but had been practicing for a full six months beforehand because this was a proper international tier one competition – we had about a week to wander around beforehand, and then a two week stage at Philippe Mille’s restaurant Les Crayeres in Reims. That in itself was amazing – I learned so much in those two weeks I’d gladly go back and do it again.

“The competition itself was the following week and we ended up winning Best Main. We’d thought, why not bring some of Australia with us and nothing’s more Australian than Vegemite, so we had a jar of it as one of our ingredients. We had to make something with duck so we created a marinade and sauce with Vegemite and that won the judges over!”

Having now done some 17 competitions, Sarah says what she enjoys the most is “the feeling after it’s all done, the sense of accomplishment. I have multiple breakdowns every time the competition comes around and everyone says to stop doing it, but I just work so well under the pressure. That feeling of achievement, especially if you win, is just thrilling and very empowering.”

Working in ACF Young Chefs to encourage others

Both Sarah and Amber are involved in ACF Young Chefs as presidents for their respective states and are particularly focused on encouraging other young chefs to compete. As to the appeal of the industry for young people today, Amber says: “I think there’s definitely a lot more support for young chefs now – looking back 20 or 30 years ago there obviously wasn’t the networking there is now, we have LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and I meet a lot of young chefs that way. You start following each other on Instagram, then you start talking and then you meet up. If you want to be in this industry it’s important to get networking – and through Instagram you can start to find people who have a passion and are posting about their food. The culture of the kitchen is also a lot different to what it was before I started – you don’t really see people throwing frypans around! I suppose there are still some restaurants like that, but not many – I think it’s more supportive and more engaging for young people today. And I always think of it as a very secure industry, because people always need to eat!”

Sarah adds: “I think it’s really important to plant the seeds for a career in hospitality while people are still at school – years 10 to 12 are when you’re thinking about your future and if schools aren’t implementing a good education in cooking, it won’t even come into your thoughts. It’s also important to be really passionate – because it’s not just a job, it becomes your life. For me it came down to self-confidence and proving my parents wrong – I’ve had my Dad who initially tried to talk me out of it come back to me and say ‘I’m so glad you’ve done this, I’m proud of you’. So my advice is, if you feel like you want to do it, go for it!”

Amber echoes this advice and recalls the words of her grandfather, who was one of the most influential people in her life: “We had many conversations about me opening my own cooking school later in my career – he used to tell me ‘be a leader, not a follower’ and that’s always stuck with me in everything I do. I believe if anyone wants to make it in any career and stand out from the rest, you need to put hard work and dedication into it.”